Mapping

Tomorrow the Weather Channel is officially launching a new Interactive Local Maps service. If you live in a city where the weather tends to vary by several degrees while just a short distance away, this new tool lets you to scope out the lay of the land--literally. The tool uses The Weather Channel's HiRAD (High Resolution Aggregated Data) technology which pulls in its weather information from several different integrated tracking services.

Like any other mapping tool, you can search for a specific location or just browse around. You can also turn on and off various layers, similar to Google Earth, … Read more

Greer Park in upscale Palo Alto, Calif., isn't what you would call dirty.

Nor is it sprayed with graffiti, broken down, rusty or disheveled. In fact, nothing on the surface would indicate the need for a concentrated effort by Google employees and friends participating in Google's first International Cleanup Weekend, an endeavor born in part to publicize the MyMaps application and KML, the XML-based markup language used to make Google's interactive Web maps.

Yet here were eight of us, stooping to harvest bottle caps, gum wrappers and cigarette butts from the tanbark and grass at 9:30 … Read more

This morning's addition of a YouTube layer to Google Earth added a whole new dimension of utility to the popular mapping application, but if you're looking to take advantage of some of that geo-tagged video goodness without installing anything, there's Mappeo. This Portugual-based site offers up nearly the same thing as Google Earth, with the addition of a search tool that lets you limit the videos to a specific area by keyword. Admittedly the service falls a little flat when you compare it to the catalog of video clips you're getting with Google Earth. There's … Read more

If you were waiting for YouTube to roll out a maps feature to browse geotagged videos, the solution has come in the form of a new Google Earth layer released today. With the layer enabled, videos will pop up anywhere you are on the map and play on the video's page on YouTube if you click the thumbnail. PC users get a slightly better experience than Mac or and Linux users, as the videos will play right inside the application.

Like other layers in Google Earth, you need to turn this one on to start seeing videos. You'll … Read more

Google has added six new cities to its Google Maps Street View, as well as the ability to pan to the top of skyscrapers.

The new cities with the 360-degree view are: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland and Tucson. And the images in Phoenix, Tucson and parts of Chicago are in high resolution, like those in San Francisco and San Diego, according to Google's Lat Long Blog. There's also a dorky video about it on YouTube.

The images in the new cities were captured by Google's own camera-equipped cars since its contract with Canada-based Immersive Media expires … Read more

Google Transit has been around since late last year, and as early as this February, public transit stops started to pop up on Google Maps, alongside other landmarks and locations, indicating the service was slowly moving into the mainstream. This morning, Google Transit is alive and kicking as a "graduate" of Google Labs. You'll now find a new link on top of your driving directions in Google Maps to toggle the public transit directions, be it bus, train, or boat--assuming you're in one of the 10 U.S. cities (or Japan) with supported transit systems. You'… Read more

If you've kept an eye on the gestures scene, you'll be familiar with the concept of controlling various apps and services with hand gestures. The idea is to help you escape the use of traditional peripheral devices like a mouse or joystick in place of your body and hands. Lately we've seen examples from Microsoft, as well as a slick peripheral from 3dconnexion that's specifically been designed for navigating 3D spaces. Xtreme Reality is a software that captures body gestures via Webcam and converts them into keyboard and mouse inputs. You can create your own keyboard … Read more

Yahoo may be outwardly struggling to redefine itself after being eclipsed by Google in search and online ads, but internally the coding and innovation continues apace, according to Bradley Horowitz, vice president of Yahoo's advanced development division.

"We have a very healthy hack program and that spirit has continued even as the company is rethinking its place in the universe and all those metaphysical questions," he said, referring to the promotion of co-founder Jerry Yang to chief executive, replacing Terry Semel, and Yang's promise to review the company's strategy and direction.

One of my favorite Google Earth apps is FBOWeb's commercial airline flight tracker (review). Enter in the details of a commercial flight and you can see exactly where it is. If you're a real geek, with Google Earth's new built-in flight simulator, you can also zoom into the flight and see what it'd be like to fly it youself.

The easiest way to access this feature is to just type in the flight code in Google. For example, search for "AA 34" (American Airlines flight 34), and click on the "fboweb.com" … Read more